The past few days have brought a number of developments which illuminate the future our ruling party has planned for us. Consider the outlines of this rapidly approaching future when you decide how vigorously you wish to oppose it, or whether you’ll allow a general sense of disgust and weariness to keep you away from the polls in the next few elections.
Our course will be charted by an increasingly powerful, corrupt, and insulated ruling class. There will be more Charlie Rangels, not less. In fact, the current Charlie Rangel might still be there. The centralization of government puts a vast amount of valuable power in the hands of career politicians. The longer their careers, the more power they accumulate. ”Safe seats” provide a mechanism for long-term incumbency, and insulate elder statesmen from electoral consequences. Loyal constituencies and high-voltage ideology, such as Rangel’s attempt to transform his corruption hearings into a racially-charged “lynching,” give them far more ways to evade accountability than any private-sector executive.
As the State takes increasing control over all aspects of the economy, political influence becomes an increasingly valuable commodity – in fact, as the command economy begins its final evolution into some form of fascism, it becomes the most valuable commodity. There will always be big money on the table for the kind of influence someone like Rangel can sell… and the buyers will profit from the exchange. Corruption always comes with increasing government power – it has never been otherwise, anywhere in the world. You can only hope your family, business, and community won’t be among those who suffer when your political masters rewrite the rules to benefit their patrons.
The SEC’s new immunity from the Freedom of Information Act is symptomatic of an increasingly opaque government. Of course the leviathan State is inscrutable. The economy it pretends to control is highly volatile, and nothing distorts it faster than the release of information which panics investors. When the State controls the economy, information about its failures and shady deals reduces the confidence of the market, which causes it to contract. Information about disasters like AIG or Bernie Madoff must be kept secret from the public in the future, to maintain investor confidence and generate the income needed to fund the government’s ambitions.
The government is also in the business of subsidizing, and even nationalizing, industries. The public cannot have access to information about these decisions. It would produce chaos in the stock market, as investors scrambled to profit from the government’s decisions, or avoid being crushed by them. In order to preserve any remnant of the tax-producing free market, the State must conceal dangerous information about its activities from the public. The larger government becomes, the more it will be necessary to conceal.
The increasing centralization of power will naturally diminish the importance of the fifty states. Arizona is currently experiencing a painful demonstration of this principle. The central government desires high levels of illegal immigration, because it views them as a valuable and growing bloc of voters hungry for maternal socialism, and responsive to the racial appeals of the ruling party. The Party certainly has no interest in undertaking the difficult task of policing the borders, which runs contrary to its ideology, and would reduce its influence with the Hispanic voting bloc. Arizona has embarrassed the Party by pointing out the delinquency of the federal government, generating mounting pressurefrom the public to take these undesirable actions. The central government and ruling Party retaliated by declaring war on Arizona.
The influence of the states is also reduced by the growing movement to bypass the Electoral College. This will make it much easier for the Democrats to milk favored urban areas for the votes needed to secure victory, rendering many of the “red” heartland states almost completely irrelevant. If you live in flyover country and feel ignored by the political elite, just wait until the Electoral College is gone.
The renewed attempts to stoke racial animosity, on display in the Shirley Sherrod saga, coupled with the Democrats’ dogged insistence on union goodies like Card Check, illustrate an unpleasant feature of your emerging future. The public will grow restless with government control. People naturally resist increasing levels of compulsion. The super-State will always insist the only solution to failures of central power is more central power – ask yourself when Barack Obama, or any prominent figure in his party, has even momentarily entertained the notion that increased liberty could be the correct answer toany crisis. More power means more coercion, and more resistance.
To control this resistance and remain in power, the ruling Party will increasingly rely on a winning coalition of loyal constituencies. These will be distinguished by their willingness to obey leadership and deliver packages of votes. They will be organizations which draw nourishment from the power of the State. Their leadership will be adept at sanctifying its ambitions by merging them with the Party’s ideology, and portraying those who resist the growth of the State as morally inferior enemies.
The all-consuming central State won’t be able to make everyone happy. In fact, it will have to make a large segment of the population increasingly unhappy, as it squeezes them to get what it needs. It can only maintain power by diverting an increasing percentage of the resources it controls to its essential supporters. The rest of you will have to learn to be satisfied with less. Your ambitions will be described as wicked, with increasingly vicious intensity. The political options available to you will grow more narrow, as each increase in government power quickly petrifies into an eternal entitlement that can never be rescinded. As the government grows, the realm of thepossible collapses. You can see this happening already. How many possibilities has the ruling Party declared to be permanently foreclosed, in just the past year and a half?
This is the shape of things to come. Your last chance to choose a different path is almost at hand